As a theist and member of a Christian religious community I cannot avoid the issues of divine revelation and scriptural authority. The issue of revelation is generally thought to pose questions of whether and how a God might communicate with us. It therefore seems to be a derivative issue of the issue of theism versus anti-theism. The reasoning behind its apparent derivative nature would seem to emerge naturally from the assumption that the question of whether and how a God might communicate with us presupposes an answer to the issue or whether there is a God or not. If there is no God, then one would have no need to consider the issue of whether and how such a being might communicate with us. What I want to argue here is that such an assumption is not well founded and is likely largely a byproduct of habits of thought born of the the long standing influence of theism on our society. Instead, I will argue that the issue of revelation is really centred on the question of whether there is a possibility for any meaningful insight to emerge from reality about the ultimate purpose and meaning of existence. "Revelation" in this sense can be seen to simply refer to the possibility for truths to emerge about these issues from our experience of existence. Given this definition, having a position on revelation is unavoidable.
If one believes there is a possibility for meaningful truths to emerge (manifest themselves) about the ultimate purpose and meaning of existence, then by my definition of "revelation," one can be described as a believer in revelation. This position can grow out of or be clarified by a position of theism, but it need not. Under such a view, it would be even possible to be an atheist and a believer in revelation. There is a minor grammatical issue here that must be addressed. In English the verb "to reveal" might typically suggest the operation of an agent of some sort, thus skewing the discussion inadvertently towards theism. However, it is certainly the case that one can write about an earthquake causing a rock to roll away "revealing" a hidden cave. It is that objective sense of "reveal" that I have in mind when I speak of revelation. Given these stipulations, the contrasting position to being a believer in revelation would be nihilism (the position that there are no ultimate purposes for or meanings of existence) or an extreme positivism (a position that only empirical statements are capable of being judged true or false).
It is unavoidable for a reasonable thoughtful person to have some kind of position on this issue. As a nihilist or positivist one believes there is no possibility for such propositions ever being determined to be true, or one believes otherwise, either in the form of the possibility of such truths or that one has actually ascertained such truths. To recast this schema onto the debate about theism, it would seem to me that agnostics in their suspension of judgement about the issue of the non-existence or existence of God, commit themselves to the position that there is some possibility that God exists-- either perfectly balanced by the rational possibility that God does not exist, or that the exact balance of rational proof cannot be, as yet, determined. An agnostic might argue that her position is really the absence of a position and that suspension of judgement, as such, cannot convey anything of substance about the issue, but is not this just an evasion? If one's agnosticism is to represent anything more than an arbitrary decision not to participate in the discussion, in effect simply to put one's fingers in one's ears when theists and atheists are about, then one accepts some possibility for the existence of a God. And if one accepts such a possibility, one also accepts the possibility that truths about the ultimate purpose of existence might manifest themselves and thus would be a believer in revelation by my definition. Even Richard Dawkins has admitted that he cannot be absolutely sure that God does not exist, and he has spoken eloquently of how people can find meaning in life through the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
By my definition the only way one can avoid being a believer in revelation is by way of a defense of nihilism or positivism. If one accepts revelation in this sense, then the only question remaining is what kinds of answers one can expect to find about the issue of meanings and purposes of existence. This brings me to the issue of "scriptural authority" that I also mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Can the answers to questions about the ultimate meaning and purpose of existence be found in particular records of religious thought about such questions? This question is dependent on the secondary issue of revelation: How does it work? For some traditional theists, the answer is that God directs the thoughts and activities of certain individuals, such that they record God's thoughts directly in written form--so called "Automatic writing." More liberal groups, like my own United Church, generally teach these days that God communicates with the conscience of certain individuals. These individuals then write about their experiences. Under this view, written revelation is always a "secondary" witness to a "primary" experience in the mind of an individual.
Although this more modern way of expressing the nature of revelation is more in keeping with my own view, it is not fully satisfactory to me. I am too much of a naturalist materialist of a certain sort to find such a description to be helpful. It requires one to believe in a God of "magic" who arbitrarily interferes in the operations of nature and the inner conscious lives of only certain individuals. For me, revelation, if it is not to be arbitrary, must respect the law bound character of nature that we observe. And it must not grant "privileged" access to God. I think there are good moral reasons for avoiding both of these forms of arbitrariness on God's part. I think the New Testament expresses a similar position when it asserts that one of the ongoing gifts of the Spirit is the gift of prophesy:
And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets (1 Corinthians 12:28).Similarly, the Calvinist tradition of which I partake also emphasizes the absolute authority of God over all of creation.
Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy (1 Corinthians 14:1).
With these points in mind, I would say for me that God's revelation manifests itself in every aspect of creation. The creation as a whole is God's communication to conscious agents within that creation. Every atom and its motion is a part of God's work and thus a part of God's ultimate plan and purpose for creation. This is why the study of science is so important. I agree with Galileo that there is a "book" of nature. So what does such an expansive view suggest about the other book? Am I such a liberal Christian that I hardly can grant any authority to scripture written by human hands? No I would grant it more.
Like all the material aspects of the world scriptures represent the direct work of God. But scriptures also represent an account of an ongoing conversation among people about the issues of ultimate meaning and purpose (their experiences, imaginative leaps and debates drawing on such sources--which is what I mean by the process of "reason"), including their interactions with people of radically disparate viewpoints from their own. For theists, this conversation focuses on purported perceptions of God's works. The most ancient scripture reflect some part of these metaphysical discussions going back millennia into the oral traditions of various communities. Since I am also a follower of Socrates, for me the operation of reason demands the interaction of a multiplicity of viewpoints defending their positions in consideration of each other, with the most reasonable discourses being those that have taken into account the greatest number of the disparate points of view as possible. "Dialectic" is the fancy Greek-derived word for such processes.
For me the primary reason for looking to ancient writings as authorities is because they put us into contact with the views of others whose views might be the most radically different from our own. Someone living 2500 years ago is only available for me today as a potential interlocutor on issues of ultimate meaning in the form of the record they might have left, in some small part, through their influence on the creation of human writings like those we call "scriptures."
Works like the Vedas, the Dharmapada, the Tao de Ching, the Analects of Confucius, the Torah and the prophets and writings of the Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament or the Koran, are important to read because they put us in touch with the thoughts of people from long ago about these issues. I can go talk to any living person, or consult the millions of books published since the invention of the printing press, but if I want to consult people radically different from those who have lived since the 15th century on issues of ultimate meaning I must generally enter the realm of the great religious writings. This is a duty, because Socrates shows us how our arguments are only as good as the strongest criticisms they have been able to stand up to, and one finds the strongest criticisms by consulting people with radically different experiences and positions from one's own. Ancient people are likely to be the most different from people today as you can get, so excluding them from the conversation based on arbitrary assumptions that their views must be out-of-date, is simply not acceptable. It is for this reason that they are "mandatory" reading to some degree.
But just because such writings might be mandatory reading for the thoughtful person clearly does not fully encompass what most people mean be the idea of "scriptural authority." This concept usually speaks to some special ethical or doctrinal authority one is willing to grant to certain specific writings. For me, such a notion of authority arises simply from the necessities of logic. If certain claims conflict logically one simply must choose which claims one will accept as being more worthy of rational consideration. And when it comes to comprehensives works with comprehensive disagreements, one must be prepared to judge which work one will draw on as a resource when considering ones views in "dialogue" with others on issues of ultimate meaning. If rationality is as Socrates suggests, always something that can only manifest itself through a process of discourse between disparate points of view, but one, as a mere mortal, cannot read and/or verbally communicate with everyone, then practical choices will have to be made regarding the priority of who one will choose as one's discursive partners. Most of us cannot just read the Vedas, Dharmapada, Tao de Ching, the Analects of Confucius, Torah, prophets and writings of the Hebrew scriptures, New Testament and the Koran, let alone all the other interesting writings, when we need to make judgments touching on issues of ultimate meaning and purpose. We certainly can't do so if we find ourselves in a crisis. At such moments, hard decisions will have to be made regarding whose thoughts to commune with, and in truly dangerous times, whose thoughts to preserve for the use of others in the future, sometimes at the expense of one's own life.
For me scriptures are authoritative because they represent the crystallization of ongoing and potentially extremely ancient conversations (and efforts to preserve such conversations) about the meaning and purpose of existence. They are authoritative because I need to formulate my own positions in the light of as many disparate views as possible from my own, and the most ancient people are likely to be as disparate as one can get. The best scriptures, therefore, would be those which are most ancient or draw on ancient sources, which encompass the largest number of disparate views in their formation, and which preserve the greatest diversity of views. This is why I like the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. Each tacitly present a diversity of authors, including ones strongly influenced by vibrant oral traditions. And it is now better understood how even many of those "single" authors represent the work of multiplicity of authors and redactors. The land of Israel represents a crossroads of world cultures. The great libraries of the Hindu scriptures are similar in these respects. But ultimately logical judgments must be made between such conflicting sources. It is simply a matter of logic that I must create an ordering or precedence of trustworthiness. Unless one is simply happy to allow oneself to drift awash among the thoughts of great works, one must begin at some point to prioritize which among them will be one's primary interlocutors. For me my attempt to do so would go something like this:
Mark
Gospels
New Testament
Torah
Job/Ecclesiastes/Amos
Hebrew Scriptures
Bhagavad Gita (Thank you India!)
Vedas
Dhammapada
Pali Canon
...
"Letters Papers from Prison" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Letters Papers from Prison" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Common Sense" by Thomas Paine
...
The Koran
...
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
....
....
I think it might be possible for someone to hold a position that seeking to consider the views of ancient people is unnecessary in one's consideration of issues of the meaning and purpose of existence. But this would have to be based on a vigorously argued position for why such a category as a whole could be lopped off as a whole from the list of one's potential interlocutors. But one must, regardless of one's judgement, also be prepared for the unfortunate circumstance of having to make decisions about what must be given priority to pass along for the sake of others in the future. This might be less of a pressing issue in the modern age, but the moral obligation to consider this contingency still applies to some extent. This is a more pragmatic reason why the issue of revelation and "scriptural authority" cannot be avoided, even by atheists, or at least for those atheists who are not nihilists or positivists. Indeed such decisions are another aspect of what makes ancient scriptures so precious since it is almost certain that some of their parts had such vital, life sacrificing, decisions made about them so that they were passed along to us. This duty to help "draw the circle wide" in terms of the ongoing human conversation is another part of the process of the crystallization of traditions of discourse about ultimate meaning and purpose, which Christians call the Logos.
There is probably ground for much greater possible consensus to develop on the issues of revelation and scriptural authority, if we abandon the assumption that revelation is phenomenon of relevance only to theists.
There is probably ground for much greater possible consensus to develop on the issues of revelation and scriptural authority, if we abandon the assumption that revelation is phenomenon of relevance only to theists.
